Wenlock (L) and Mandeville, the newly unveiled mascots for the 2012 London Olympics, are inspired by a children’s story “that tells how they were fashioned from droplets of the steel used to build the Olympic stadium.” And their eyes are cameras, foryourinformation.

The rejected designs, we’re told, included “anthropomorphic pigeons, an animated tea pot and a Big Ben with arms and legs.” Really dodged a bullet there. (Can you imagine if they had put arms and legs on a clock tower?)

Wen and Mandy will be very busy between now and summer ’12, visiting schools and serving as Olympic ambassadors the world over, and through their prolonged media exposure condemning a generation of children to years of nightmares in which they are menaced by hideous amorphic cycloptic monsters.

(Choice comments on the above-linked Guardian story include, so far, “Well, the one in blue has gone and soiled itself,” and “Is Matt Groening on our Olympics committee? First the 2012 logo looks like Lisa Simpson giving head to Bart, and now we have Kodos & Kang as our mascots?”)